Connecting with God through poetic articulations of lived, embodied experience–engaging texts from the Revised Common Lectionary for Christian churches, other biblical and spiritual texts, and evocations of the divine in rituals and other public events–always accepting lived reality as a primary source of divine revelation and mystery.

sight

Reflection for the 4th Sunday in Lent, Year A

A person need not be born blind to not see; it happens all the time, those sure of Earth’s flatness, slavery ordained by God, women unfit to lead. Just last week I ran a stop sign I did not see, and before that I knew beyond all doubt the name of that tune I hummed most of my life— too bad I lost the bet.

Those born blind do not not see, drawing on different methods to perceive –like butterflies and bees with acuity of color more nuanced than ours– what we with working eyes often miss. Always tempting to make fun of Pharisees not seeing the truth of Jesus right in front of them, but if fast-melting Arctic ice and destruction of Great Barrier Reefs cannot convince us something is wrong with the planet what good will new glasses do?

Facts are hard to see when we don’t want to see them, when by the ways of the world, some things are not seen— white people not seeing Black lives that matter—and others magnified by repetition and conventional wisdom into sacred texts—our nation right or wrong. Everyone knows are dangerous words, a Ph.D. does not protect us from ignorance any more than a creed built by humans or certainty about the truth of holy writ. Even Jesus failed to see the woman of Canaan, confusing her with a dog.

How many ways of seeing are there? Stay open.

About this poem . . . This familiar story is both inspiring and troubling. Pharisees are again blinded by their ideological prism and Jesus does what seems a good thing anyway. Yet, is there not also a presumption that being without the use of one’s eyes is a condition that needs correction—a burden so heavy that it must be lifted by divine agency? I admit to not wanting to lose my eyesight, and yet people without it perceive reality I never know.